Environmental framework for economic growth

To say that the Russian economy, sooner or later, can stop its development due to environmental restrictions, until recently it occurred to anyone. A sharp drop in production after 1991 has released gigantic environmental resources, which so far, despite all the economic ups of the pre -crisis years, has not been completely used. That is why Russia had a significant reserve that it was able to resell to other countries within the framework of the Kyoto Protocol.

Nevertheless, if the future development turns out to be more or less favorable, then sooner or later there may be a lack of environmental resources, and further economic growth will actually be stopped. Moreover, now, according to some parameters, there are restrictions on development, which, although they have a sporadic nature, nevertheless forced to put off investment plans in a long box.

One of these restrictions is now well known to everyone. The explosions occurring from time to time in military warehouses located close to the development of cities and villages clearly show that further development in a particular territory is impossible if the corresponding military units are not withdrawn from it, and ammunition located on them will not be disposed of.

But relocation and disposal cost a lot of money, and someone should pay for these expenses. If this is a private investor, then this kind of “environmental expenses” will increase the cost of the project, and will be able to make it talented. And if this is the state, then the tax burden will increase, the severity of which already exceeds all possible limits.

Another restriction is less known, since it is mainly found on the periphery, but this is not less significant. From time to time when a large company wants to build an industrial facility in a certain area, the local population meets this project in hostility, since it is not without reason to fear a deterioration in the environmental situation. Although the benefits of the new project are obvious (growth in income and employment, the emergence of an additional sales market for local production), the project cannot be implemented.

The confrontation in the agricultural regions, where the occurrence of an industrial giant means the conclusion from the turnover of a large number of agricultural lands is especially strict.

The local population understands that instead of increasing income, their reduction will occur, as the traditional source of their receipt disappears, and, of course, protests with all his might.

Accordingly, the investor must somehow compensate for the reduction of agricultural land and the general deterioration of the environmental situation by, for example, the resettlement of the population from the available settlements to others. But these measures, as it is easy to guess, will cost a decent amount, which, again, will increase the cost of the project and reduce its profitability.

These are current development restrictions that are added to long -existing environmental risks. Any metallurgical or chemical plant, an atomic power plant, a test stand or a landfill, or even a foundry in a machine -building factory - all of them constantly worsen the habitat of people working on them and people living next to them.

And this deterioration requires compensation, which, for obvious reasons, is rarely carried out, and/or a rather serious program to reduce environmental impact.

The most annoying thing is that if you submit compensation for the paid and measures to limit the environmental impact of the implemented, the question will remain - will the products of these “advanced” enterprises competitive in the world market will be able to maintain pressure from other players? Many of which - for now, in any case, do not attach much importance to environmental restrictions.

If until recently the country, which mostly “devoured” world environmental resources, was the United States, now China is being replaced, and this is much more dangerous. China borders with Russia, Chinese manufacturers compete with Russian companies just in many types of “dirty” industries (for example, metallurgy) and, finally, the cost of labor in China is still so low that no one will think about how to protect it from the poisonous effects of heavy industry.

Despite the emerging ecological rhetoric, the Chinese, most likely, will continue to calmly increase environmentally dirty production, taking a little care about the purity of their habitat, and alien workers.

What is worth, for example, the accident in the chemical plant in the province of Jilin in 2005, which led to the release of the Sungari River, and then the Amur, 100 tons of benzene, nitrobenzene and other chemical compounds? The gas stain passed along the river to the territory of Russia and threatened the water supply systems for cities that take water from these rivers, as well as fishing crafts in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk. Russian environmental services then coped with the situation, but who knows what kind of surprise Chinese neighbors will throw us in the future.

The Chinese are still far from the complete and final industrialization of the whole country, so they will build and build new plants, threatening both their own environment and the environment of other countries. How to reduce the ecological onslaught from the east, so far no one has come up with.

Namely, he will now make the main contribution to the deterioration of the global environmental situation.

This, however, does not cancel, but only complicates the task of developing and implementing the most effective environmental programs for domestic enterprises. Since it will not still come about the border of local threats to our citizens, and data on competitiveness are not able to cure diseases caused by or not utilized production waste.